


never thought you'd leave before me

by WillozSummers (SammieRie)



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Gen, hints of Wickoff but it's open to interpretation, honestly just some real quick spur of the moment angst, the other are mentioned but don't do much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 18:52:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14291199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SammieRie/pseuds/WillozSummers
Summary: from the prompt "Person A dies and Person B charges into battle recklessly"Julia falls, and Quentin rages against the dying of the light.





	never thought you'd leave before me

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to Tobiko for the title and for getting me to finally watch this show. this is my contribution to us breaking each other's hearts back and forth.
> 
> this is totally unbetaed, so all mistakes are my own.

Julia falls. Quentin doesn’t think it possible, though he should know better. He’s killed a god himself, he knows it can be done. But even before she’d been granted divinity, Julia had always had an air of invincibility. Where Quentin sometimes seemed more ghost than person, she’d always been larger than life, the most captivating presence in any room. With the power of a god running through her, she was golden and glorious.

Julia falls, and Quentin hears a scream he cannot place. He does not realize it’s his own, does not register the way it rips out of his throat and tears through him. He sees his best friend’s body crumple in slow motion, sees the godly glow seep out of her skin. He’s halfway across the battlefield, and he can do nothing but watch. He has spent his life powerless in comparison to Jules, has spent the past few years powerless to help her when she needed it most. He has grown used to being a spectator to his own tragedy, but he would not accept being spectator to hers.

Julia falls, and Quentin rages. He does not believe they can win this without her. He does not believe he wants to. Julia falls and the battle is lost. Julia falls, and the battle ignites. Kady has always been barely contained rage, a bottle rocket waiting to explode. Quentin’s scream is like a match lighting her fuse, and her fire will burn down the battlefield. She picks a sword off a fallen enemy, too uncontrolled for battle magic, needing the physical release of energy and the feeling of death under her palms. When the battle is won, she won’t regret that they are stained red; the world knows no justice, so she will show it revenge.

Quentin, meanwhile, unlocks magic he didn’t know he was capable of. He was taught magic comes from pain, and there is no pain to top this. He’s lost Alice before, lost Eliot, lost his father, and Fillory, and magic. He’s lost so much. It all pales in comparison. Losing Julia is like losing himself, like seeing his childhood go up in flames. It’s like having the oxygen ripped from his lungs, or trying to survive in a world without the sun. It is all he can do to stay on his feet, and yet his fingers form the magic on instinct. He fires off every piece of battle magic he’s ever read, hands combining formations in ways nobody’s ever done them before. He won’t be able to remember them when it’s over, won’t really believe he did them, but he is running off pure magic, and it’s become a force beyond his control. He can feel himself starting to blur, can see the blue taking over his vision, but Julia’s body remains broken and unmoving, and they will pay for what they took from him. From the world.

Quentin feels hands on him, a tug on the back of his shirt, and in a blink he’s on the ground. Alice is on top of him, the weight of her body crushing his hands against his chest, halting his magic. He tries to throw her off, but he’s too drained to move. After a moment, he stops struggling. She senses his defeat, shifts off him, allows him to sit up. He sees now that he’s at the edge of the battlefield, Penny beside him. Before them stretches a wasteland of corpses, some bloodied, some burned, some made unrecognizable in the path of his magic. Kady is kneeling somewhere in the middle of it all, collapsed in on herself, the tremors in her body visible even at a distance. Penny travels to her, wraps her in his arms. He’s met with a barrage of fists, Kady lashing out at anything she can get her hands on, until the last of her strength gives out and she can do nothing but fall against him. Margo and Fen are tending to Eliot, the most injured of them all, and Quentin feels sick at the moment of relief he feels seeing them alive. They’ve survived. They’ve won.

The battle is won, but Julia is lost, and Quentin doesn’t know how to call that a victory.

**Author's Note:**

> come find me @ ravenclawjuliawicker on tumblr to hit me up with prompts or yell at me for the feels


End file.
